Optimizing Serially Concatenated Neural Codes with Classical Decoders
This work addresses the decoding challenge for neural-based channel coding schemes, offering a novel approach to analyze and improve these codes, though it is incremental in combining existing methods.
The paper tackles the problem of decoding neural codes by showing that classical decoders like the BCJR algorithm can be applied to real-valued, neural encoders, achieving close-to-maximum likelihood decoding with feasible computational complexity.
For improving short-length codes, we demonstrate that classic decoders can also be used with real-valued, neural encoders, i.e., deep-learning based codeword sequence generators. Here, the classical decoder can be a valuable tool to gain insights into these neural codes and shed light on weaknesses. Specifically, the turbo-autoencoder is a recently developed channel coding scheme where both encoder and decoder are replaced by neural networks. We first show that the limited receptive field of convolutional neural network (CNN)-based codes enables the application of the BCJR algorithm to optimally decode them with feasible computational complexity. These maximum a posteriori (MAP) component decoders then are used to form classical (iterative) turbo decoders for parallel or serially concatenated CNN encoders, offering a close-to-maximum likelihood (ML) decoding of the learned codes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a classical decoding algorithm is applied to a non-trivial, real-valued neural code. Furthermore, as the BCJR algorithm is fully differentiable, it is possible to train, or fine-tune, the neural encoder in an end-to-end fashion.